I was recently invited to speak on a panel with the Search Fund Coalition about the side of business ownership we don’t talk about enough. 

Not deal mechanics. Not growth strategies. But the mental game — the stress, the pressure, the loneliness, and the sheer weight of business ownership.

The conversation hit home. My fellow panelists shared their lowest moments — the times they broke under pressure and questioned if what they were doing was worth it.

We also talked about the other side: the deep sense of purpose that comes with business ownership. The freedom to define success on your terms. The ability to pick your kids up from school. The satisfaction of building something that’s truly yours.

And we talked about resilience. How it’s a muscle that gets built over time. How being thrown into the fire teaches you more about yourself than almost anything else. How, despite the pressure, you can get better: more capable, more in control, more able to handle whatever comes next.

That panel stuck with me because too many business owners struggle in silence — thinking they’re alone. They’re not.

So let’s talk about it.

How to Survive the Grind Without Losing Yourself

Owning a business is hard. Running one is lonely.

The highs are high. The lows are low. And those highs and lows often exist in the same 24-hour period.

You can start the morning with a gut punch — a key employee quits, a major customer doesn’t renew, and suddenly, existential fear sets in. Can we make it through this? Is it me? Am I the common denominator in these problems? By the afternoon, you and your sales manager close the biggest deal in months and feel unstoppable.

This is the ride, almost daily. The emotional whiplash of business ownership can be relentless. You don’t just deal with stress — you live inside it. And it’s yours to carry.

If you don’t learn how to navigate the roller coaster, it will break you. I’ve seen it happen before.

After years of living in this world—and talking to hundreds of other business owners—I’ve found that success isn’t just about being good at the work. It’s about managing the mental side of the game. Managing yourself.

Here’s how I think about it:

1. The finish line keeps moving – If you think things will “settle down” after the next milestone, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.

2. Resilience is a skill – The more you go through, the stronger you get.

3. You need a support team – No one carries this weight alone.

4. Know yourself better than your P&L – If you don’t manage your energy, you won’t last.

5. Not everyone is built for this – And that’s okay. But if you’re unsure, test it first.

6. Success needs a definition – If you don’t define it, you’ll end up chasing someone else’s version.

Let’s break these down.

1. The Finish Line Keeps Moving – And That’s Part of Life

An easy trap for business owners to slip into is thinking: Once I solve this, things will get easier. Once I hire the right people, once I stabilize cash flow, once I hit my revenue goal…then I’ll be able to breathe.

But here’s the thing: you never actually arrive.

The problems don’t go away. They just change shape. If you’re waiting for things to “settle down,” you’ll be waiting forever.

This is true in life, too. You finally get the hang of school, then you graduate only to start at the bottom again. You start getting good at your job, then get promoted to a new challenging role. Start getting the hang of that? Now add kids. Like business, life doesn’t ease up. The stakes keep rising — the finish line keeps moving.

The people who last in business don’t eliminate stress — they learn to operate inside it. They recognize stress as a feature of the job, not a problem to solve.

2. The Good News? You Get Stronger

If your business journey keeps getting harder and if the challenges never stop coming, then how do people actually survive?

Simple: they adapt.

Running a business is constant problem-solving. Sometimes these problems are bona fide crises. After navigating a few of these, you’ll start to see a pattern: you’ve been here before. And you made it out alive. 

The next time you’re in that situation you may even recognize that you’ve felt this way before…as if the world is about to end because of this crisis. And you’ll learn:

Over time, this builds an inner confidence. Adam and I sometimes joke that our biggest strength is our ability to get punched in the jaw, walk through glass, and still get up the next morning with energy and enthusiasm. We’ve just been through so many challenges that after a while, you realize: this is part of the game.

Our job is solving problems. At some point, we have to stop being surprised when another one lands on our plate.

This is the process of building resilience. You're building a track record of overcoming those hard, scary moments. So when another hard, scary moment comes? You can look back and remind yourself—I’ve been here before. And I got through it.

3. Know Yourself Better Than Your P&L

Great business owners know their numbers. They have KPIs that serve as “check engine lights” on their business — early warning signals that let them course correct before a problem becomes a crisis. 

Great leaders apply this same approach to managing themselves.

Because if you’re not tracking your own energy, stress levels, and well-being with the same level of discipline, you’re flying blind. And when you’re the one steering the ship, a blind captain is a dangerous thing — not just for you, but for your team, your customers, and the health of the business itself.

Start paying attention.

• What situations drain you the most? (Firing people? Conflict? Uncertainty?)

• What recharges you? (A long workout? A weekend with no work? Conversations with other operators?)

• What are the signs that you’re burning out? (Short temper? Foggy thinking? No patience for your team?)

Once you start tracking patterns, you can actually do something about them.

Maybe you realize that back-to-back meetings leave you mentally drained, making it harder to focus on high-impact work — so you block off time for deep thinking and decision-making. Maybe you notice that when you skip workouts for a week, your patience with your team nosedives — so you treat exercise like a business meeting and never cancel it.

You wouldn’t ignore a major issue on your P&L. But business owners do this to themselves all the time.

They know exercise helps, but they skip it because they’re too busy. They know taking a long weekend would reset them, but they keep pushing it off. They know they need to protect time for strategic thinking, but they let their calendar get clogged with low-value meetings.

Your habits—good and bad—compound over time. If you know what keeps you in peak form, treat it like a non-negotiable business priority.

4. Assemble Your Supporting Team

No one succeeds in life alone. This is especially true for business owners.

The pressure of running a business is relentless, and if you don’t have the right outlets, it can overwhelm you — or worse, damage the relationships that matter most. You need multiple release valves for the different components of running a business. Overloading one person with too much—whether it’s a spouse, a business partner, or a friend — isn’t fair to them, and it isn’t sustainable for you. The key is balance.

A strong support team keeps you in harmony. That means assembling people who can help you carry the weight — each in their own way:

• Therapy – A place to process the weight of leadership, fear, frustrations, and your internal motivation without judgment.

• A professional coach – Someone who pushes you to improve as a leader and helps you think through crisis situations or challenges with key team members.

• A peer group – Business owners who get what you’re going through and can provide the emotional support of knowing the issues you’re facing aren’t unique to you.

• Trusted friends & family – The ones who remind you that life is bigger than your business.

One of the other business owners on the panel shared a story that stuck with me. I’m paraphrasing from memory, but the essence of it was this:

Business ownership is too heavy a load to carry alone. Be intentional about who you bring into your inner circle. A strong support system won’t make the pressure go away—but it will make it easier to carry.

5. Not Everyone is Built for This—And That’s Okay

Some people are drawn to business ownership because they see the upside: freedom, control, wealth creation.

But what’s often overlooked is the cost of that freedom. The stress, the weight of responsibility, the reality that every major decision—and its consequences—lands on you.

It’s like that old saying: You leave corporate so you don’t have a boss…then discover you now have hundreds of bosses: your customers, your employees, your landlord. 

Being a great entrepreneur isn’t about being better — it’s about being built for the pressure. Some thrive in uncertainty. Others prefer stability. There’s no right or wrong. Just knowing what energizes or drains you.

I once promoted a long-time employee into a senior operator role to oversee one of our companies. He knew the business inside and out. He was tenacious, type-A, and fiery about the opportunity ahead. On paper, it was a perfect fit. 

But within months, something changed. The pressure at the top was different. In his new role, every decision ended with him. He shared with me once that he was struggling to sleep for the first time in his life. We hired him a CEO coach. But still, there was no one above him to escalate to. The safety net was gone. And when, inevitably, issues arose or his team failed to reach a goal, he felt buried by the pressure. 

One day, he sat us down and said:

He seemed almost surprised to hear himself say it. But here’s the thing: that realization was a win. Because figuring out what you need to thrive is one of the most important things you can learn about yourself. 

Some people thrive under the responsibility. Others thrive second-in-command. Some people crave structure, others need autonomy. The sooner you figure out which one you are, the better decisions you can make for your career, your happiness, and your long-term success.

That’s why, if you’re unsure about making the leap into business ownership, test it before you commit.

A friend of mine was considering leaving a high-paying NYC private equity job to acquire a blue-collar small business. He was drawn to the idea of owning something real, something he could build. But he also knew he was stepping into a completely different world.

So instead of making a blind leap, he spent two weeks traveling to visit friends who owned small businesses. He came out to Salt Lake City and shadowed us. He wanted to get past the glamour and social media narratives. To see what an average Tuesday actually looked like.

Because, especially for the audience at the panel—searchers leaving corporate to buy a business—once you sign that dotted line, especially with personally guaranteed debt, you’re in.

The only way out is through.

That’s why it’s worth being thoughtful before jumping in. Business ownership is an incredible path for the right person. But not everyone is wired for it — and learning that before you sign on the dotted line isn’t failure. It’s wisdom.

6. Redefining Success on Your Terms

The pressure to be “successful” can be a crushing driver when you run a business — especially because success has no single definition.

For some, success means taking home a healthy profit at the end of the year. For others, it’s being a great employer, paying people well, and creating a culture they’re proud of. For many, it’s the ability to take advantage of business ownership itself—to pick their kids up from school, to control their schedule, to live life on their terms.

But here’s the challenge: these priorities often compete with each other.

It’s hard to pay your team well, live a balanced life, and post strong profits all at once. The minute you add employees, customers, investors, and lenders into the mix, you have multiple stakeholders whose needs must be balanced. That equilibrium—between financial success, personal fulfillment, and business sustainability—is always in tension.

Maybe picking your kids up from school every day prevents you from running the most financially optimized company. But that’s not a loss — that’s a win.

Your goal isn’t 30% EBITDA margins. Your goal is to be profitable, financially durable, and—critically—present for your family.

If that’s the case, you shouldn’t feel guilty when you leave work to pick up your kids. That’s not a distraction. That’s success. 

The most fulfilled business owners I know are the ones who made this decision consciously. The ones who didn’t just chase the biggest number or the most ambitious vision, but who designed a business that fit the life they wanted to live.

If you don’t define success for yourself, the world will define it for you. And you may not like where that road leads.

The Bottom Line

Business ownership throws you into a crucible. It’s one of the greatest personal development programs in the world — whether you wanted it to be or not.

It tests you in ways you can’t anticipate. It exposes your weaknesses. It forces you to confront parts of yourself that, in any other career, you could avoid. There’s no buffer, no safety net, no corporate structure to hide behind. It’s just you — your judgment, your endurance, your ability to handle pressure and make decisions when there’s no perfect answer.

And in the process, it does something invaluable: it reveals who you are.

It clarifies what you care about. It forces you to define success on your terms. It teaches you what kind of leader you are, what kind of pressure you can handle, and what kind of life you actually want to build.

That’s why survival isn’t just about skill — it’s about mindset. It’s about:

• Understanding that the finish line keeps moving, so you stop chasing an illusion of “just one more milestone and I’ll have made it.”

• Recognizing that resilience isn’t something you’re born with — it’s something you build, crisis by crisis, punch by punch.

• Assembling the right support team, so you’re not carrying the weight alone.

• Treating your own well-being with the same discipline as your financials — because you can’t lead well if you’re constantly running yourself into the ground.

• Being brutally honest with yourself about whether this is the right path for you — because ownership isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay.

• And finally, defining success on your terms, so you’re not mindlessly chasing a version of success that was never yours to begin with.

Because at the end of the day, it’s not just about building a great business. It’s about building a life where success actually feels like success.

If you’re going to do this, do it in a way that works for you.

Because the business will always demand more. It will take everything you give it. Your job isn’t to let it. Your job is to set the terms. To run it — instead of letting it run you.

That’s a wrap.

That’s it for this week — thanks for following along. I enjoy reader feedback + ideas on what to write about next. Just hit reply.

Have a great week ahead 🤙

Chase Murdock